"These SIGNS PREDICT SUCCESS As An ENTREPRENEUR" | Nick Bradley

People don't appreciate the journey of entrepreneurship is design by design. It is difficult, Right. It's the thing that most people don't do because it's, you know, it's hard.

A lot of the listeners that we have are looking for different ways to scale up or level up. And, you know, one of the interesting parts that I found about your story is this marathon, ultra marathon side of you, right? So I'd love to hear, like, how that equates to life and business, because no human being just sets out normally to do ultramarathons. At least not many of them anyway.

That's true. It's true. And you know what, it's funny, this question doesn't come up that much. It's kind of at the very back of my bio as.

Well.

I thought we should start there, right?

Yeah. It's a passion thing for me as much as anything. So I do like talking about it too. But there's two parts to the answer, right? The first one is I got into running when I was. Well, the first time I kind of got experience of running, I was 10 years of age. So my. My grandfather, who was the main male influence in my life because my father left our family when I was 2, you know, got divorced from my mum and my grandpa had a heart attack in his early 40s. And he was the first Australian, as far as I know, the first Australian to run a marathon after having open heart surgery, had a double bypass. Oh, wow. And I was 10 years of age, so it was 1984. And you know how you sort of have these fleeting memories when you're a kid? This is one of those ones where I can close my eyes and I was there. And he ran the marathon. He finished it, did it in just over four hours. In fact, behind me here, I've got a picture of him finishing. I've got his medal and all those.

But that just massively inspired me because it was one of the first times I'd seen someone go up against so much adversity and prove a lot of people wrong. Everyone said he was going to die. I mean, the whole thing was like, how can you possibly do that after so much trauma? So that was always an inspiration piece for me. So I got into the concept of that back when I was 10. I ran my first marathon when I was 21.

And then I just sort of stopped running for a period of time. And I was always into fitness, but I got back into it about a decade later. And the reason I got back into it is I was Going through a bit of a transition in my whole career, in my life and I, I needed to have an escape. And for people who run or do endurance sports, a lot of it's about the sort of meditation that it gives you. A four or five hour run. Yeah. I mean, did you run yourself, Stephen, or anything like that?

A couple miles is about my Max Nothing ultra marathon.

That's all right. I didn't want to be talking to someone who's done like hundreds of these things and then he's, you know, otherwise it's a really fun.

I'm not that guy. You're good.

But the thing is I did it for that. Right. So I did it for that. And the other thing I found out later, and this is kind of the interesting part of the answer is I also started to get more extreme and extreme with it because it was a way of, I suppose, hiding away from various pains of what I was going through. I was going through quite a full on transition in my career. I was not liking the person I was becoming. I was making a lot of money in the world of private equity, but the environment can be quite toxic. So I turned to running. The extreme part of running, if you want to call it that, because it was a connection back to my grandfather and him and his journey and what he meant to me. But it was also a way of me going out there and dare I say it, almost punishing myself.

But also building this massive amount of grit and resilience. So there's a positive and there's a potential negative to the reasons behind it. And I just found that by going out there and putting myself through these 24 hour runs, 100 miles, all that sort of stuff. I was running a marathon every Sunday as a training run. And it just gave me clarity, focus, it gave me all these different things, but at the same time it also gave me this, this kind of, there, I say use the word punishment. It gave me this kind of gritty feeling of I needed to kind of make change in my life.

Yeah, I love it. You know, I think grit and resilience, obviously, being an entrepreneur of multiple business myself, I understand that resilience, perseverance and grit are required on a daily basis.

You know, you work your mind and your body through those things. Doesn't matter if it's running or doing some of those Ironman and things like that. But what I found is because I conquered things that a lot of people would find very difficult to comprehend. Whatever happened in my business life, which is what I was channeling at the time became significantly easier to deal with and I just became significantly more focused. Relentless is probably the other way to put it as well.

Yeah, well, let's park on adversity for just a second, if you're okay with it. Right. So you've bought and sold 22 plus businesses, obviously. Top line 5.2. That's a heck of a number. That means. And that's a heck of an accomplishment. So it's not just ultra marathon. Let's just say you have experience in business, right.

You deal a lot with entrepreneurs that are trying to scale up, you know, from, you know, I assume, the startup phase all the way to the existing business that are just trying to level up and you have a ton of great content around that. In doing so, have you been able to uncover maybe three common denominators or three specific adversities that all entrepreneurs are going to face that need to be addressed and overcome?

Yeah. So there's a couple of things that jump straight out for that question. The first one is people don't appreciate the journey of entrepreneurship is designed by design. It is difficult.

Right.

It's the thing that most people don't do because it's hard. Right. Not necessarily hard to be successful if you stay, you persevere, but you are going to hit these challenges. So the first answer I'll give you is the identity of an entrepreneur needs to change and evolve at the various stages of business growth. So the person who's great necessarily at starting a business, that creative stage, that fun stage, when you go into scale up, you're working with a whole different set of principles and practices to be successful.

Yeah.

Right. So it's that whole saying about, you know, the person needs to change to, you know, to be able to tackle those problems, not necessarily the environment. Yeah. So that's the first piece. The second piece is I often draw this on a bit of paper. People think the journey is going to be a straight linear line.

Sorry. Yeah.

Like chasing your tail.

I often draw it and I often call it the roller coaster because you can have your best day and your worst day and it's often the same day. And you've just got to be comfortable with that. Being comfortable, being uncomfortable. And as soon as you understand the mindset of that and you realize that that's what you signed up for, and this is where the parallel comes back to sort of ultra running. Right. There is a lot of parallels between it. Then you kind of realize that the journey of what you're doing is the reason you're Damn well doing.

Yeah, that's right.

Right. The people who think it's about the money, they think it's about, you know, having an island and whatever else you desire that. That may or may not come. You've got to learn to love the journey to be successful. In my mind.

Yeah. I was going to just on that, I was going to mention that, you know, the more income that I've created, passive income or otherwise, the more I realize that it has the least amount of effect on my overall contentment, joy and happiness.

Yeah, absolutely. I had two Porsches, you know, million buck, whatever house. I've still got the house. I haven't got the Porsches. I actually sold the Porsches when I got out of private equity because they weren't making me happy. Yeah, right. This is funny. Like, you know, I've done a whole heap of things, you've mentioned some of it, but I. These days I don't really spend that much money because I get more enjoyment from doing this sort of stuff and from focusing on scaling and making income and impact. Right. But the last part, I think, which is important, and this is probably more of a kind of tip for people listening, is you've got to surround yourself with the right people, Right. You've got to have the right environment, the right. Whether it's mentors, whether it's support, whether it's friends, colleagues, whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. But the thing that levels you up, that equips you, gives you the water for the food, for the journey, is putting yourself in those environments where you're constantly growing as a person. So I think they're the things that jump out to me for the question you asked.

Absolutely. Well, one of the things that I heard in that too, is there's this mindset of. You mentioned the entrepreneur's identity. Right. So so many times our identity is tied to the business we create or business we found or whatever. The quirky, what is it? Statement I heard one time was the quirky brilliance of the founder can only take you so far kind of scenario. But it seems like as whether it's the UK or United States, it doesn't matter. It seems like everybody wants to celebrate the wins and almost wants to hide the grind. And what I heard you say was, is really an entrepreneur's identity or attributes of that identity are learning to celebrate the journey and the grind and not really focus on celebrating the wins.

You've got to do both, right? I think you've got to do both, but you've got to Realize that both are part of it. So I think what I have also seen working with hundreds of entrepreneurs in different ways, be that as an investor and also now what I do in terms of helping people scale up is you see that people, if they don't celebrate and they don't have regular acknowledgments of success, that's when it can lead to burnout and overwhelm. But I think if you think it's all about the end game, then you're going to be solely mistaken. It's a bit. Probably the best analogy I can give you is like trying to cross the desert and you see the. What is it? What was it called? The Oasis.

Yeah, the Mirage or whatever.

Yeah, the Mirage, right. And you realize, yeah, the Oasis is a mirage. And then you just get defeated. And the thing about this game, right, and you know this because you've done it, is it's a game of attrition. Yeah, yeah. People just give up and they realize that, you know, that they think they can't do it. There's all these other things that hit their minds back to mindset. And because they give up, that then creates opportunity for everyone who has back to that grit, resilience, the tenacity to make it happen.

Yeah.

And so for me, entrepreneurship is all of those different concepts combined into one. You're going to be successful, quite frankly, if you just don't give up and you keep that relentless forward progress.

That is so true. It's funny, you know, being an entrepreneur myself and you know, being around hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs over the last decade, One of the things that I see as a common thread sometimes can be the support that they have in their own home. You might have a spouse or a partner that's not necessarily behind your ultimate vision, or you might have one that's like, go get it, baby, you got this, go on with your bad self kind of thing. How would you encourage the entrepreneur who's trying to make the dream a reality, but also is not trying to hurt their family along the way?

Yeah, it's a really important question. And I sort of, I'm very structured. And I think one of the things that's been important to me, being successful in different things, both business and life, is understanding how to be present in various points or various categories, if you want to call that of your life, so that you are absolutely there when you need to be there. And so these days I really only focus on three things. You know, I focus on being a fantastic husband and father. I focus on being as healthy as I possibly can. So I still run, but I'm more balanced about the running than I used to be. And then I focus on my businesses and it's in that order. So for me it's about making sure that I don't just get either sucked in, if you like, to one of those areas because I can be quite obsessive at times and I'm very clear about how I plan all that out. So my advice to people is be super clear on what's important to you and make sure you schedule the time that's necessary to look after those important things.

Don't think that it's all business and that's make you happy because it won't.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, I was my wife, you know, I've shared this before. Not many times publicly, but one of, in fact, I think in my entire life, the difficult upbringing, all that stuff rolled together. The only regret that I have was focusing on a business during two years of my wife's health rather than now. Her health is not great. She has to, you know, she has to get on a scooter to kind of get mobile and move around. And it's the only thing. It's like if I did just get that there's just those two years back I could have easily set my businesses over here or not necessarily been heavily focused in scaling and growing and getting and whatever, you know, more of a stable pace kind of thing. And I could have focused a lot more on enjoying that two year timeframe. So I think that's great advice. The priorities have got to be in line.

Yeah, man, I've got some goosebumps as you tell that story. Right. Not because I've had that happen to me, but I can feel that because I look at it in my kids, right? I've got young kids, I've got a nine year old and a six year old and there were times particularly when I was so focused on money, I was so focused on the perception of, of success that I just can't remember being around. And then I look at them now and think, where did that, where did those years go? And it's a similar feeling. It's like, why do I do that?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to pivot just a minute. The listeners and viewers that obviously love and come and see this podcast on a regular basis, the show, they kind of vary. We've got the entrepreneur, so to speak, meaning I have an I. When I say wantrepreneur, I mean that in the kindest way possible. Because I, I am one, I have been one. I have both a flagship business and a startup. I've got both dichotomies right now.

But in that process I've got this. We've got the entrepreneur who's all idea, we've got the solopreneur who's now putting their idea into place. We've got the entrepreneur that now is starting to build a team around them. What is the core difference between a startup and a scale up?

Okay, so the thing with startup is, and there's one fundamental transition I think is probably the best way to think of it and I often say to people when they come to me and they say, I want to scale up, Nick, teach me how to scale up. The first question I say is, you sure? Right? Because let's be super clear here, I.

Don'T mean to laugh, but being an entrepreneur, you know why I'm laughing?

No, I do, I do. Because, you know, you can still create a good six, possibly seven figure business with a few people around you. Depends on the business model and all that sort of stuff. But, but in startup, startup is really about looking out into the market, seeing a problem, working out how you can solve that problem in a remarkable way and being super focused on who you're there to serve, right? You can have a small team around you, you have a lot of levers, but quite honestly you can control those levers. There isn't too much complexity and there's agility, there's all these kind of things. Someone who's creative, someone who likes control, someone who's like that sort of entrepreneur. And there's a lot of them we could talk about, they exist, they thrive in startup. Okay? Now scale up by definition has two fundamental principles, right? The first one is the ability to build teams and to lead effectively, lead in every possible way, be direct when you need to, have empathy, all of that. And it's the ability to create process and structure and systems and most importantly around all of that, run businesses through numbers and metrics. Now if you think about the difference between the leader back to that identity point we spoke about beforehand, think about that creative entrepreneur for a sec, right? Coming up with the idea is, you know, get out there, you know, massively visionary. Imagine the idea of talking about structure and process, you know, schematics, you know, scorecards, right?

That makes me want to slow down. I don't want to slow down.

Yeah, I love that stuff. So for me, see, I'm, I'm very much a scale up guy. I'm about precision. It's probably my favorite word. And so that's the big fundamental difference. If you want to take that journey, you've got to realize that it's not about how can I achieve, it's about who's going to achieve this for me, it's the who, not how. And a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with that, about who they need to become to step into that. And a lot of them try and go into that, but they fail miserably because they don't realize how they have to evolve. And that's often where businesses go backwards. A lot of businesses go into scale up and then they come back. But when they come back, they don't just land in this nice world of startup, they actually can sometimes go bust because that transition into that space and that coming out of that space can be quite painful for the founder.

Absolutely. You know, I was thinking back, you know, I think the, you know, using experience as the best teacher. My greatest business mistake, bar none, was building a business without building myself.

I love that.

I can't think of all the team members that I accidentally ran away that were great team members in the early days. Now, thank God, I'm a better leader now than I used to be. Right. But there is an element of understanding, core self awareness that I think a lot of entrepreneurs get wrong. I think that they're so focused on the vision, so focused on the place that they want to go, they don't realize the types of people that they need to surround themselves with. You did an episode just recently on your podcast, Scale Up Podcast that I love. And it was about this, this idea of having different types of entrepreneurs. The visionary, the process, the strategist, and so on and so forth. Everybody should go check, check out that episode because I know you do a deep, a great deep dive on that. So they got to go check that out. But in doing so, can you give us a snapshot of maybe how the different entrepreneurial minds kind of meshed in the world?

Yeah. And I think, I think that episode, it covers about five different archetypes, if you like, and it talks about the different people who fit into that. And there's definitely the strategist, there's the visionary. It's all those sort of things, my personal belief, with any type of entrepreneurial journey. And this is kind of the secret to it, right? Find out first and foremost who you are, not necessarily that list, but understand your purpose, understand your why, understand the things that are the principles, the standards of who you are. Right. And from that, work out two things, right. Work out a. What you absolutely love to do and work out what you're really good at. And usually they're the similar things, Right. For me, I'm only really good at a couple of things, right?

Yeah.

Pretty terrible. And then the secret is outsource everything else. Right. Leverage, delegate. I did a different episode on that and I think when I talk about the different types of entrepreneur, depending on who you are, if you're the visionary.

Get people around you who are just operationally extremely strong. If you're the strategist, if you're the chess player, if you're the guy who can see or the girl who can see the moves in advance, make sure that you've got people around you who can bridge the gap between that. Because if your foresight is so good, you need people who can look closer in. It's the sort of 30,000 foot down to the granular. Right. So you need that. And so for me, it's understanding those different things because entrepreneurial success definitely scale up. Back to your original question, Stephen. It's about what you build around you. It's fundamentally all of your success is about that self awareness, again, using being present, all that. And then it's about being clear about what you put around you. And then it's about building and scaling through those people, through the leadership you provide, anyone who can get that concept and really understands it. Because there's a bit of an ego kick in this.

Oh, it's a huge ego kick. Huge. Yeah.

This is it. When I work with someone, this is quite an interesting thing. One of the first things I do is I do a sense check on this self awareness. So I won't. If someone turns up and say, I've got a unicorn here, I've got a company that's going to be worth, you know, a billion dollars. And the thing hasn't even started. It's a red flag for me. It really is like your revenue.

Sorry.

It's not so much the business, it's the. It's the. It's the mindset. Right. I work with some pretty interesting companies now where there's a humbleness to the leadership. Right. You know, and, and for me, it's all those different things. So. So I think that my, my suggestion is you definitely have a listen to that episode. I think it's going to give clarity to a lot of people. But the, the main thing is not so much about you trying to be all of those different Personas.

Yeah.

It's understanding where you Play. No, you can't be. It's impossible. You can double down on what you're great at.

Absolutely. You know, one of the reasons I wanted to bring that up is because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are chasing the alternate ego or the alternate expectation. They're chasing someone else's expectation of what a leader is supposed to be or what are their style of entrepreneur supposed to be. I know for me, when I first got started back in the day, I'll never forget this, my dad told me one time, he said, skygas don't get ahead, they get by. Right? And that drove me for, gosh, a decade before I finally understood that, hey, wait a minute, this is my life. I probably should become more aware of who I am or what I'm good at and start to leverage that to the service of the most people. And it took some time. So there is a huge ego kick to that, pivoting on that. You know, we know that entrepreneurs oftentimes are the governor, so to speak. We have a device on American cars. I'm not sure what they call it in the uk, but it's called a governor governor. That throttles your overall progress. It throttles how fast you go or how slow you go. Right. It has a limiter on it.

I've never before. I don't know if we've got. We must have them here, but this is.

What keeps the teenagers from going too fast, basically.

So, yeah, I got it.

School buses have them on them for sure. But this device obviously limits how quickly or how scalable, you know, that car, whatever bus can do it. And the entrepreneur, the gunslinger, if you will, or the type of entrepreneur is that governor for any business. That being said.

After the entrepreneurial correction or the ego trip. Not the ego trip, but the ego fix, where that person is learning humility and they're beginning to grow. What do you think the next differentiator is between a good business and a great business?

So I look at businesses, we've talked a lot about the Persona and the identity of the founder, the CEO, and then you could actually bridge that into the leadership team, particularly when you start to get up to businesses that are scaling. I look at things, I step back a little bit now, and I look at it with more objectivity. And I'm looking at what are the tangible and intangible characteristics of a great business, which I therefore define as one that is highly valuable. Okay. And now value doesn't mean necessarily it's making lots of cash. It can be valuable in terms of the impact it's making on the world. But I look at it in terms of those two things. Profit and purpose is another way of calling it out. And when I look back at my 15, 20 years in private equity, we had six characteristics that were super important, I mean business. And I'll go through them very quickly because I think they're important to any entrepreneur to understand. I mean the first one is every great business has a clear purpose and that's defined by it understands where it's trying to get to part of the vision, but it also understands where it is now. And the strategy in terms of how it goes from A to B is absolutely clear once you understand those two points. Okay, so where am I going? Where am I today and why does it matter? Okay, Now a business that can't answer that fundamental question, again, it still sits with the leadership team, but if you can't articulate that, it decreases the value. Right. The second thing, which people misguide, if you like, is what I call a bias for profitability. So I'm not a big believer in these big business, these tech businesses that are pre revenue, that get value. We talk about clubhouse before we came on here, it's valued. Billion dollars hasn't got you revenue. I know that people make money. I know, I know there's all these things that happen. But for me, I like good solid businesses that are profitable pathway to cash generation, right? So that's the second thing that I've always looked at. The third thing is, is the proposition, is the reason for it to exist super clear in terms of who it's trying to serve, the problem that it solves and does that in a unique way? Okay, the third area is does it have a predictable flow of the right customers, consumers driving recurring revenue? Again, predictable revenue flow. Does it have a clear set of processes, systems, structures that are automated where they can be with technology to drive efficiency? Does it have outstanding people that are underpinned, if you like, by a really clear intentional culture where the values and behaviors are consistent and coherent so that that's whenever I look at a great business, I'm scoring in my mind. It's funny, right? I've done this for so long. I used to be the guy that would go into private equity backed businesses and turn them around, right?

That's what I did.

So I would be able to walk into those businesses and I could feel it, you know, it would take me an hour, maybe max to walk around and just know. And the businesses that have all of those characteristics working are the ones that you Know, have the ability to create significant value for shareholders and everything else, but they also tend to be the ones that have got momentum and are making a bigger difference.

Yeah. Now do you think those six items are, would be the same.

Step by step methodology, for example, for budding investors? So obviously I have liquidity now in my life and I look at dabbling in various investments. I've stayed in the wheelhouse that I understand, which is real estate historically. Right. I'm like everybody else. I get a pitch or two probably a few times a week or a month kind of deal. Would you follow those same six criteria to better understand what's a highly risky investment versus one that's more risk averse? Is that the same process or the.

Process be slightly different piece? No. I mean I'm the most boring person in the world when it comes to investing because I just stay in my lane.

Yeah.

I know how to do one thing right, which is buy businesses that are undervalued, scale them up, sometimes create groups by buying other businesses and bolting them all together and then selling them back to private equity firms or other for five to ten times what I paid, called multiple arbitrage. So for your question, those same six characteristics, I look at a digital business out of Silicon Valley in the same lens that I would a car wash in Texas. I can tell you which one I'm going to invest in.

Yeah.

They throw off cash if you want to have liquidity. And I mean, you know, but it's like it's landscaping businesses in West Palm Beach. It's, you know, those sort of. They don't sound very sexy.

Yeah.

You know what, they are really good. But you know, if you take those six characteristics, if I apply just the profit piece to some of the investments that probably land on your desk and mine quite a lot of risk, you can make a lot of money. But for me it's about having a bit more control. I like to be able to have more influence in that.

Yeah, well, I think it's a. I think the six items do a couple different things. First of all, they kind of give an aspiring entrepreneur or a budding entrepreneur or growing entrepreneur a roadmap to the things that they should be considering as they're building their business on top of building themselves. It also gives us a roadmap a little bit for someone who's more of a seasoned entrepreneur who maybe already owns a handful of businesses. Maybe they bought, sold them, maybe they flipped them, maybe they're long term holds. Whatever the case may be, I think it's also a good idea to use those as a lens of protection to make sure that what you are buying is in fact either undervalued or valued properly. Right. Because we know that the biggest mistake you can make in the buying of businesses game is to buy an overvalued business by a long shot.

Yeah. And just on that one point, that's usually what I call the emotional equation, because it's a little bit like finding your dream house and then you feel. It's called deal heat, actually in the world of private equity because you fall in love with the deal, with the business, as opposed to looking objectively at the deal.

Yeah, yeah. Which is definitely something that, you know, more seasoned entrepreneurs have to be very careful of. I'm sure. I don't know if you've ever been burned. I've bought a couple things that maybe I shouldn't have bought, which is how.

I learned the lesson. I lost quite a bit of money when I did what everyone else does in the world of private equity. You get all these different things, you kind of think you're invincible. All these tech businesses turn up and I'm pretty astute, right, in terms of how I evaluate that. But even I, back in the day when I was kind of, you know, had probably too much testosterone, but that's going to turn into this. And listen, no judgment. Anyone who can do that with precision and gets, you know, excited by that, there's nothing wrong with it. I just choose to play somewhere else where I know that I can add the most value in terms of what I'm good at. Back to what I said beforehand and what I love doing.

Love it. Love it. Well, look, how can everybody find you and find out more about you and connect with you?

Yeah. So I think the first thing is, if you've got a business, listen to my podcast, scale up your business. I've been doing it now for two years. It's been an incredible journey. And the thing I appreciate the most of that is meeting people like you. And I can't tell you how many friendships, business relationships, it's just been outstanding. Right. So. So if that helps people, then listen to it. And then we've got a Facebook community as well, which has got about 3 to 4,000 people. And it's a great, you know, we're very clear. It's not a pitch fest. I hate all that. It's basically people helping people with their businesses. But if people want to get out directly in touch with me, I'm on clubhouse. Come find me. I found you.

Instagram or LinkedIn, you can search for me there. I get back to every single message. It's not as quick as I'd like these days, but I promise I always get back to people.

Good deal. Good deal. Well, one final question before I let you get back to your busy day. And that is, what is the lasting legacy you're hoping to leave on this world?

Yeah, this is really important for me.

And I'll try and answer this succinctly because it's the last question. It's a bit of a longer answer. I spent a lot of my life following other people's perceptions and aspirations of who I should be. So I was told by my grandfather, who we mentioned at the beginning, get a job. The job is security. Do this. And I had a. A successful corporate career, private equity career, before I ventured properly into the realms of entrepreneurship like I do now. And so for me, my legacy really now is because I came to this late, it's about creating as big an impact as I possibly can make on the world. So my whole aspiration is to create a significant business empire. And it's an empire not just for any monetary gain. I don't need the money. It's about trying to create a bigger impact. And for me, that's about entrepreneurship as a force for good to people in countries where they don't really have access to the principles of what you and I understand. And where this really hit home, and I'll finish with this, is I was running an ultramarathon called the Comrades. It's a big race in South Africa in Durban. It's 87km in 35 degrees Celsius heat through these salt plains. And when I was running it, halfway through, you run through the World Vision camps, and that's where they have all the orphan children and everything else like that. And they're lined up along the fence. They haven't got, you know, much at all. They've got ripped clothes, they look dirty. They had bottles of water. They're trying to give the water to all the runners and they haven't got anything. And I remember stopping and walking along and shaking all their hands in this room. And the thing that hit me is my dad, when he came back into my life, he passed away from. With cancer. And I thought, imagine if the cure for cancer is in one of these children's heads, but never access to it.

Oh, my gosh.

So my legacy. Sorry, long answer.

No, no, I love it. This is exactly why I asked the question.

My legacy is about how can I make a bigger impact now that I've understood what my proper mission is. To be able to bring that skill set, that mindset to people, as I said, who don't net, who don't have that access. And so the foundation that I'm setting up in the moment, at the moment, is really about that. And I want to be able to scale that up and be able to achieve my mission through. Through those types of endeavors.

I love it. I love it. I got a bonus question for you now. I can't help myself. Just one more. One more. And let you get back to it. You just mentioned the word empire. There's lots of definitions about what an empire is or what it should be. What is your definition of what an empire should be?

Yeah. Okay. So I can tell you what it's not.

Definitely not the negative connotation. For me, we've talked about it in threads through this conversation today. It's about making a bigger transformational impact on the world. And it's both about the value you can create through business and the wider impact you can make to society in equal measure. I don't think either one of those has a greater salience. And I believe this. Right. I believe that a lot of the big businesses in the world these days, or the big conglomerates, they have more power than governments.

Yeah.

Certainly, you know, you look at the wealth distribution. So for me, an empire is an entity. It's a person who builds that because they want to make significant change. It's not about just the personal thing. It's the philanthropic side of that. So that's how I define it.

I love it, man. Dude, thank you so much for hanging out with me for the last little bit, man. I'm loving it. We've got to do this again. I can pick your brain all day long. You're one of what I refer to as my people.

Like, I feel that as well, Stephen. And, you know, it's great to. As I said, the gift of this. Right. Which I've never, never, ever underplayed, is the friendships I've made through these conversations.

Yeah. Well, it goes a long way. And, you know, I'm a big proponent. One of the things I've said here a thousand times, I'll probably. And I'll probably say a thousand more, is I firmly believe that the greatest purpose in life one can have is to serve the person they used to be.

And you've been talking about that about with. With your. With your grandfather. You've talked about that with the perspective on what an Empire should or should not be. You've talked about that through the lens of there's human greatness inside of every single beating heart on the planet. It's just, in many cases, undiscovered. It's just not. It just hasn't been discovered yet. And if any way I can come alongside of you along your mission to help you build this empire, whether physically or spiritually or empowerment or high fives along the way, you just let me know, man. I want to see you make that a reality.

Listen, I appreciate that massively. I got goosebumps again, Stephen, so thank you. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that. And just to finish one last point of what you said, as I mentioned, I came late to understanding this stuff. I lived in a cloud for a long time when I was in that world of private equity. So my whole thing is now very much unleashed, and I feel like I'm catching up a bit, but not in a bad way. And for me, it's the people that I have managed to meet on this journey, which, again, is just outstanding. So I just wanted to say I appreciate you appreciate being on the show, and I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Dude, I've loved it, man. We got to do it again.

All right. I know you got more interviews to get to, so I'll let you go, buddy. You have a good day.

All right, thanks very much, Steven.

Now that you know how to scale up your business and your life, now you got to go to the next step. So check out this video right here.

Because as a culture, we are taught that, well, if you're successful, you get high grades, you're a great athlete, you're popular, give you self esteem. No, I call that other esteem, meaning you're betraying your authentic self.